Tuesday, 27 May 2008

A small world

Not long to go now before Crimefest 2008. I’m looking forward to seeing a number of good friends, and also to meeting a number of people for the first time – including, I hope, Maxine Clarke, whose blog ‘Petrona’ is required reading as far as I’m concerned.

I’m moderating one panel and appearing on another to be moderated by Colin Campbell (someone else I haven’t met previously.) The panel I’m moderating is at the somewhat unattractive time of 9 a.m. on Sunday morning, but it should be good fun provided I don’t oversleep – always a likelihood. One of the panellists is Neil White, again a writer I haven’t met before. Yet we have one or two things in common.

Neil, like me, is a solicitor who writes in his spare time. I came across his first book, Salem, through a mutual friend, a partner in my firm called Duncan McAllister. Since then, Neil’s career has really taken off, with a contract from Harper Collins. He’s just sent me a copy of Fallen Idols, which has a football background, while Lost Souls has just come out in paperback.

Laura McGarrity is a detective who features in the two recent books and the story behind the naming of this particular character is that Neil borrowed the name of Duncan’s wife. And it just so happens that the real Laura McGarrity works not only in my ofice, but actually in my department. Truly a small world.

2 comments:

Oh, Martin, what a nice thing to write! Thank you (blush).Yes, I'll be at Crime Fest, and am very much looking forward to meeting you there. I have never been to a book meeting before, let alone one dedicated to crime fiction, so I am very curious and quite excited about it.

About Me

I am a British crime writer, and the author of eighteen crime novels, including series set in Liverpool and the Lake District, as well as winner of the CWA Short Story Dagger and CWA Margery Allingham Prize'. My latest book is The Golden Age of Murder, a ground-breaking study of the genre between the wars, and I am consultant for the British Library's Classic Crime series, as well as archivist to both the CWA and the Detection Club. I have edited twenty-four anthologies, published about sixty short stories, and written seven other non-fiction books..